KIRKUS REVIEW

A boy slams a door. This is not late-breaking news.

Unless the slam dislodges a red, rubber ball that has been stuck in the second-story gutter, which falls on the cat sleeping in the yard, that whereupon jumps on the lady’s head, spilling her bag of groceries, the eggs in which splatter on the face of the gentleman out for a walk—he could use the exercise—pulling his bulldog on a skateboard behind him, which rolls off down a hill and causes the fish-delivery truck to lose its cargo of slippery, slimy things, which ruins the sewer workers’ midmorning break, which rouses the dragon in the sewer, which scares the aliens, which causes the circus strongman to get three ice cream cones mashed onto his bald head. Meanwhile, the door-slammer is oblivious, walking just a step ahead of the tide of chaos, ears safely protected from the din by earphones. It is all a cumulative contagion of catastrophe, with few words to interrupt the proceedings, just an eyeful of cockamamie consequences. This story will be left up to the teller’s panache, aided and abetted by Stower’s crazy art happenings, strangely but effectively drawn with a palette of candy-heart colors and with teeming action on every page.

Not a lullaby by any stretch, but good for a guffaw. (Picture book. 3-7)

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